When asked how many people were involved in dissident groups, Ms Gillespie said. “We’re talking in the low hundreds, but it depends what you mean by ‘involved’. “There are people who tacitly support these people; those people who turn a blind eye to what they do or don’t report what they do . . . or by lending a vehicle. But in terms of active involvement, you’re talking about low hundreds.”

Sammy, the PSNI is already about 400 constables short of the Patten recommendation for a ‘peacetime’ service and we shouldn’t be surprised if there is a further reduction in manpower.

UK and Irish intelligence services are both involved and it’s likely that their informers will continue to be protected, even if it means allowing some attacks to proceed. Also, certain paramilitary godfathers will continue to enjoy immunity, as has been the case for many years.

another

Thank goodness for that high level of cross border co-operation then; I’m sure you will concur Pete.

Sammy,
To undermine conspiracies, the most effective way is to infiltrate them. Uniformed constables or even plain clothes detectives can’t do it. Are you recommending a new perhaps “special” branch to do the undercover work?

Itwas SammyMcNally whatdoneit

another

Cross border patrolling/movement in both directions should be increased/introduced – around the time of the Quinn murder the Gardai were calling in to houses in Crossmaglen.

Nevin,

It does not make economic or security sense for the British to send people over to Ireland who are more counter-productive than counter-insurgency, so train more PSNI and deploy them instead and that will reduce the overall bill in both Britian and Ireland.

joeCanuck

..to send people over to Ireland..

Sammy,
You don’t think they employ any locals then?

Itwas SammyMcNally whatdoneit

Security forces not answerable and accountabable to the local jurisdiction is a not a good idea, not living here as well which I presume many of them do not – especially the ringleaders – is not a good idea either.

Itwas SammyMcNally whatdoneit

If that is what it takes – Republicans of whatever creed who dont want MI5 causing sirpatrickmayhem then have to support the locals doing it.

joeCanuck

Somewhat absurd. I’m not aware of them having any special powers. They gather information and, if they uncover criminal behaviour, they pass the information to the police and public prosecutor. They are the ones who lay and press charges and they are accountable.

Pete Baker

MI5 aren’t going anywhere, Sammy Mac.

Not with their brand spanking new £25 million regional headquarters here only relatively recently opened.

That’s what the parties signed up to.

Better get used to it.

billy

Isnt it funny the dissidents now number 500-600 active members when the psni top team suggested you could count them in tens , not hundreds a couple of months back . Mathematics is obviosly not one of the psni’s strengths .
Regards PSNI strength 400 constables is underestimate 200 full time reserves in retraining at this moment , 225 kept to March, 500-600 Regular Constables , Sergeants , Inspectors leave before March 2011 under patton
After this period annual leavers of 180 officers a year will resume after a short gap. In the early years of the troubles the RUC doubled in size to combat the threat .Those officers are now coming up to retirement 30 years and i am sure will jump ship at the first opportunity . I would if somebody gave me £100,000 payoff and pension to boot. No doubt they paid for it .
Somebody should actually ask how many officers will the psni have in march 2011. With no recruiting theyll certainly have a lot less. The biggest increase in police officers leaving the service is in the first five years which i have been told never occurred even in the darkest days of the troubles.Most young psni officers join with degrees pay off their student loans and then rethink their options. as they have no longer pathways to promotion open to them as the service is topheavy in authorities.
I was also told one fifth of the service are women of child bearing age and it would be expected that they will be and should be accomodated to have children and to start families in the next 5-10 years . The predecessors of the the psni were never renowned for their family orientated views I have been reliably informed.

Itwas SammyMcNally whatdoneit

Pete,

As I said it does not make security or economic sense to have an agency which is counter productive – I’m sure the British know this it may take some time for them to admit it.

Those interested in upholding the law and undermining the dissers should be helping the British along what may be a difficult path for them. Certainly the SDLP and SF should be pointing out the benefits of fully home-grown security forces and explaining the economic and security benefits in the long term to the British.

British imperial hubris often gets in the way of doing the right and sensible thing but that does not mean the mad feckers should not be told.

Pete Baker

billy

“Isnt it funny the dissidents now number 500-600 active members when the psni top team suggested you could count them in tens , not hundreds a couple of months back. Mathematics is obviosly not one of the psni’s strengths.”

billy, the 400 figure is based on the most recent monthly statistics which were belatedly published in mid-September.

christy walsh

“You don’t think they employ any locals then?”

Sure they do… they are called ‘dissidents’.

Itwas SammyMcNally whatdoneit

christy walsh

So no

So they encourage

So they encourage both recuitment into the dissers and then they recruit them

Munsterview

As I have been pointing out on other threads this increase did not arise in a vacuum !

People should not take comfort in headcounts : this new lot of activists will be as different from the early seventies and late nineties Provos as these were from the fifty six /sixty two people.

I would suggest that a few lessons have been learned along the way and one of these is probably concentration on selective high value targets that can be hit with small self supporting, cells. Once England takes off with the ‘lily whites’, v the securicats, then the success or otherwise of the new structures and strategy will be seen.

It will be probable be a small tight team doing their thing for a limited period and then melting back everyday life while another group with no contact with this team or base takes over and repeats the pattern from another base in another location.

One thing for sure, you will not see any of these new IRA at Easter Commemorations, in full combats with flags flying !

The new war is already afoot : only hindsight will allow a definite ‘before’ and ‘after’ boundaries to be put in place.

As always truth is the first causality of war and all three police forces are deploying their spin and selling the public, not the facts of the situation, but the situation that it suits them to want the public and the dissidents to believe.

As for MI5 and truth ?

That is not their task, their function is to hide the truth and substitute the truth with any number of scenarios that they want the public to believe.

How was the Guilford Four and the Birmingham Six sold. Just how long did MI5 sustain the fiction that these were two IRA terror cells when all the world knew they were innocent.

What of all these ‘ Nail Bombers and IRA snipers’ killed in the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry ?

MI5, MI6 and the British establishment maintained that those killed were ‘terrorists’ right up to Cameron’s announcement in the Commons and in the square in Derry.

Even at that there are probably Slugger posters and readers who still believe the massacred people were not innocent protesters. In this game one anyone who is not involved is but ‘ looking through the glass darkly’ they can only speculate but that will not stop threads of comment.

Some of this will be deliberate misinformation and disinformation by posters who are informed but on the establishment side.

As to anyone who dare attempt to take on the Intelligent agencies / Police force , establish spins and propaganda apart, to show it for what it is….. they will be accused of either terrorism or supporting terrorism, or whatever ‘isms’ it takes to question their credibility.

Seconds are out, the bell is gone and this is but the shadow boxing before the first blows are landed !

Pete Baker

“As I said it does not make security or economic sense to have an agency which is counter productive”

And it’s not, Sammy Mac.

Counter productive, that is.

Other than in your mind.

National security [of the UK, including Northern Ireland] remains a reserved matter – and the concern of MI5.

joeCanuck

And, of course, you are in no way offering advice to the so-called “dissidents” as to how to effectively use the limited resources they have? Sometimes you puzzle me, MV, with seemingly ambivalent views. Do you, yourself, really know what it is you want?

Munsterview

Joe,

I am not running with the hare and hunting with the hounds on this one !

I know many continuity, dissidents Republicans etc but in their eyes as I have been totally compromised by my support for the GFA.

Ironic is it not in light of the constant allegations made here in postings from the mis-information / dis-information agendas whether they are from plants, visceral opposition to republicans, people who should know better or just plain mischief makers who cannot resist a poke at the opposition.

And yes, guilty as charged on the latter from time to time myself !

Analysis of the previous military campaign had been going on well before the ceasefire and it did not take an Einstein to figure that there was indeed something very wrong indeed that went very high !

Take it from me Joe these current dissidents do not need advice from me or anyone else as to how to operate in the electronic era. The new operational procedures are over a decade old.

In the seventies when the Provos were supposed to be Bogside and Ardoyne underclass that could not operate outside their ghettos, they ran a signals intercept in the Malone road, dressed appropriate and drove the right cars.

So well was the operation run that it was only uncovered by accident when a Telephone line checker went from house to house with a ladder checking house to pole connections and see the intercept exchanges from an outside upstairs window.

Hard to tell who was more surprised, the Brits or the locals when the set up was found !.

Now there is plenty third levels around with all manner of expertise available. Their input will show.

So what am I to do, embark on self censorship because of how my comments may be perceived or distorted ? Keep stum on what is happening.

While I continue posting on slugger I will do a number things in this general area, first comment on the GFA shortcomings form a critical and qualified but still supportive viewpoint,
second comment on the attitudes of non subscribing republicans still involved in the armed campaign, third, comment on the activities of all aspects of the British persence and strategy and especially on the spooks aspect, fourth, comment on how aspects of unionism are perceived from a republican/nationalist/catholic viewpoint and finally expose Southern corruption and incompetence at every available oppertunity,

If I can get some appreciation of republican / nationalist / catholic mind sets and concerns across and provide some inputs into the general debate, I will do so, it not life goes on.

If my objective was to provide advice to armed dissidents, an open political site that most republicans could not be arsed with as it is considered for and about unionist, is not the way that I would choose to do it.

Prior to posting, I read slugger rather than some other sites more compatible to my political views as I wanted contrary views. I try to present a contrary view here that will broaden debate and dare one hope, that will also bring some appreciations of the concerns of my side of the equation into a forum where they are not normally articulated in a contextualized or informed way!.

Kathy C

right before adams/mcguiness were allowed in from behind the gate for talks at storemont…the UK reported that the Provo’s…in the IRA were just 300. Now they are reporting that the ‘dissidenets’ number 500! Wow…

Munsterview

I stewarded some big marches in Dublin where I counted off 1,500 in my section alone ( one of ten main stewards), wet the gardai estimated the entire crowd at 3,000.

Either the gardai could not count back then or they lied back then…..which are they doing now.

RTE had reporters present, they were shown republican stewards figures yet continued all that evening and all next day to give the gardai figures.

State security services, North, South and across the water are involved in a struggle for hearts and minds and if that means lying to the public, so be it.

joeCanuck

Yes, that’s always a bone of contention, all around the world in fact. Anytime there is an anti-government protest the count by the authorities is always much less than the organizers. Maybe the best thing to do, for those who are interested, is to take the average.

Cormac Mac Art

Munster, the fact that there are fools out there willing to commit murder for their ‘aims’ just goes to show that some remember everything and learn nothing. No, the likes of them have not learned a single lesson. Best of luck to the services on both sides of the border, they need all they can get.

Munsterview

Cormac

And what have the likes of you done ?

Injustice is a two way street : in the foregoing postings I have contextualized much of what is going on for the benefit of UK, French, German and North American friends as well as slugger readers.

However you are motivated to surface with apparently one intent only : kick the dissidents just the same as you no doubt lined up to kick the Provos!

Some party with an agenda getting a bit worried about the hearts and minds thing again ?

One law for those loyalist gunmen terrorizing and laying siege to Catholic / Nationalist target families or for placing pipe bombs in an infant school…… where was your comment on that.

When however some weeks ago, a dissident operation was carried out in the vicinity of a school, oh my goodness did all the usual suspects come out to have a go !

And do anyone wonder then why comments of such as your good self have about as much influence with dissidents as what is written on the plastic wrappings of toilet paper they use!

When I see you and posters like you pay some attention to what caused the dissidents as well as the dissidents per se, then I will take it that your reaction is something other than a visceral ‘kick the Provos’ undecomissioned mentality !

‘Security’ on its own will no more stop the dissidents than it did the Provos. While it may be politically correct and populist to blame the dissidents, they have made the least contribution to the current political stalemate and the climate that has inactive republican militants reconsidering their choices.

Wilde Rover

Michael Collins was the only person in eight hundred years to blindside the forces of the Crown, and yet here we are again with the implausible tale that these so called dissidents, already heavily infiltrated during the time of the Omagh bombing, are somehow independent entities, undirected by the forces of the Crown.

For those of you who believe this tall tale, I have some prime land in Florida for sale, as well as a bridge in New York going cheap.

Munsterview

Wild R,

“…..Michael Collins was the only person in eight hundred years to blindside the forces of the Crown…..”

Not quite correct. The Military council of the IRB did that. Collins was not on the council that planned the Rising, there was a) a plan for a general nationwide insurrection that involved 10,000 rifles and ammo. These were sources without England’s awareness in Germany and while the operation to land the guns and distribute them to volunteers were in place. Only key people were in on that and even then on a need to know basis.

The coordination was perfect; there was a big Sinn Fein ‘athletic training camp’ in place for a month ready for the guns, the RUC had got bored with watching it and were hardly giving it any attention. The ship came at the appointed time with the expected war material, but the radio car with Sheehan and co, ( only occasional cars on the roads back the and as remarkable as choppers nowadays) it was driven with low lights which were poor to begin with, the driver turned into a road that was in fact a pier and drove into the sea.

No radio contact, the ship was rumbled by the British Army, scuttled by the crew, the radio car was missing. The rest is history.

General ‘Fighting Tom’ McSweeney who left West Cork as a child was an experiences US battlefield General. On one occasion he saved Shermans command and army by throwing his line across a confederate raiding party that fell on what was supposedly a secure rear.

General Tom rallied the scattering troops, the Fenian stood their ground, breaking out the colors ( including the Fenian sunburst) and telling his men that they were all there to die Tom and his thin blue line held.

60% were lost but the line held long enough for the relief column to take over. Lincoln described it as a turning point of the war, had Hardys brilliant tactical raid succeeded the Conferdates could have reached Washington.

The IRB plan b) was for a limited rising to take Dublin including the Castle, England’s symbolic and actual centre of their Government intelligence in Ireland. It was accepted, indeed eagerly anticipated that the Provisional Government would be executed giving the Nation a new set of cultural heros and a momentum that would lead to partial and then total freedom.

Plan b) entailed the second tier leadership to be bloodied in battle but held safe to take over. Mick Collins for example was guarding an internal stairs in the GPO during the rising. Once the ‘failed rising’ was over ( it had achieved the esoteric aims of the planners) the second tier leadership quietly slotted in, used the camps as a university as per plans and consolidated the IRB structure for the guerilla fight to follow.

Collins was a brilliant man, as the recent RTE TV program fronted by Michael Mc showed but for all of that until the IRB make their archives available, the true nature of Collins and his genius will not be understood. He served the IRB and Ireland up to his last breath !

However it was the IRB that blindsided the Brits, Collins but did what he was trained to do !

Munsterview

Missing line…….

60% were lost but the line held long enough for the relief column to take over. Lincoln described it as a turning point of the war, had Hardys brilliant tactical raid succeeded the Conferdates could have reached Washington.

General Fighting Tom actually drew up the plans for both the Invasion of Canada and the a Nationwide rising at a later date if that scenario failed.

billy

Pete, Thanks for the reading and comprehension lesson but I didnt know I had to restrict myself to slugger for material to read and comprehend..

Anyway with approx one hundred Dissident prisoners North and South of the border which is increasing on a regular pattern I wonder when we move from having Dissident organizations in their ” low hundreds” to a proper indication of their true numbers. I always thought low was meant to be rounded down not up. One last thought on the subject . Now they are so few in numbers does that mean they are all in prison or will be shortly and we dont have to worry anymore.

The increase of technological tools used to combat terrorism over the last decade and a half will not make life any easier for would be terrorists.

After 9/11 the hundreds of billions, if not more, spent in this area by the US and her allies will make it extremely difficult for dissidents. Not to mention the lack of support in the community, as well as former Provos stepping forward to alert the authorities rather than see some outrage shatter the peace.

I hope I am not proven wrong, but I find it hard to believe that the dissidents will be able to land more than one of two really significant blows.

Furthermore, with the number of Islamists out there I cannot see why they would want to get lumped in with that pyschopathic bunch.

Wilde Rover

Munsterview,

I was referring to the original Bloody Sunday, but I’m glad you tacitly agree with the broader point I was trying to make.

Wilde Rover

Munsterview,

“The coordination was perfect; there was a big Sinn Fein ‘athletic training camp’ in place for a month ready for the guns, the RUC had got bored with watching it and were hardly giving it any attention.”

I hate to be a pedant, but the RUC didn’t exist until 1922. You might be thinking about the RIC.

JJ malloy

In reality, some sources show the Aud was tracked throughout and the Brits were waiting to pounce on it. The British had cracked the German Code and could decipher all of their messages.
Interestingly, the Imperial Staff did not bother to alert the authorities in Ireland in anything more than a vague way as they were more concerned with the Germans finding out they were compromised than a possible Rising in Ireland.

Also, as I’m sure you know the Aud was seen by local volunteers in the Tralee Bay but they were told it wouldn’t come before Sunday. The Aud did not have a wireless and had no way of knowing that the plans had been changed. More surprisingly, the leaders in Dublin didn’t seem to be overly concerned that the change in plans had gotten through.

The authorities in Ireland also were alerted by several informants of the upcoming Rising, as well as McDonoghs ill-made remarks to a group of Volunteers about some of them not coming back after Sunday’s exercises. They failed to act on these, and MacNeils countermanding order lulled them into a false sense of security.

There were blunders on both sides….but as Maxwell wrote to a colleague back in England aftewards: “Most don’t realize how close we came to dealing with a full scale, national Rising.”

Munsterview

JJ

Back in early summer a US detachment of troops in Iraq, on a routine patrol decided to raid a house in a neighborhood that they were passing through as there seem to be an lookout alert system in place around the house that attracted the patrol attention .

What US troops found was electronic signal intercepts from US drones and satlight feeds that was both live image on monitors and also going on to CD recorders. All the electronic gear was ‘off the shelf’ and modified for the US signal intercept use.

Iraqi resistance fighters Intel had access to the same information that the senior American Regional Commanders had…….but the resistance could react it on a more flexible and quicker basis than the US soldiers could as it did not have to be filtered through conventional army command structures.

Is it possible that such a sophisticated operation was sited where it was at risk of being so easily recovered….. or was it intended that the yanks find it to psyche out the soldiers ?

I favor the latter explanation. Oh Boy did that cat send pigeons fluttering all the way through the army command, the Intel community, the Senate oversight Committee and even in the Oval Office itself. It also had the same effect in all Nato Countries!

I have previously posted the site and thread where details of this were given !

There are hundreds of third level professionals out there now from Nationalists Ghetto areas with expertise in Electronics, Civil Engineering etc,

( Natives please excuse ghetto nomenclature, I am also writing for international audience. In this regard, all scurrilous loyalist comment especially welcome)

Any good civil engineer experienced in raising multi story buildings also know how to bring one down with just sufficient force applied to the most vulnerable critical point where the weight of the building itself will do the rest !

Canary Warf took tons of explosives on a lorry, this just takes a few pounds and a laptop !
(yes, i know not quite that simple……….just go with the idea )

The pseudo gangs of Low Intensity War has been successfully checkmated in South America by guerilla groups……. for every such assassination carried out in a rebel held area, two officials of the State Party prosecuting the war were killed in the city!

This forced the abandonment of the assassinations to the extent that the State had to kill its own previous executors in the rebel areas to make sure the assassinations ended, so great was the fear and panic the tactic produced in the politicians, their immediate and extended families and state forces.

Could not happen here of course ?………. Yes indeed it could, even when such assasins are in a secure prison, once they are no longer of use to their political masters!

If dirty tricks assassinations are tried again in the North there will not be any local bloodbath : I would be very surprised indeed if the South American lessons have been learned and taken on board.

Even if all the spare poliece security forces of the whole European countries, were made available to the UK, it still could not protect the whole of the whole of English elected political establishment if the South American model is applied.

Just how many thousands of elected representatives would require protection. How long would it take for other UK groups to become copycat operators ?

Before I am again accused of offering advice to dissidents etc, ( as if they needed it), may most emphatically point out that I am doing no more than sharing information readily available on the net to any general researcher with an interest in these areas! ( Another reason as to why Obama is attempting to restrict net use and dictate the information carried)

If I can keep informed in what is happening in revolutionary politics and movements through a few hours a week on the net, just how much more information has a dedicated Intel dissident officer eating, sleeping and…. etc this activity got ?

It do not take an Einstein to see what will happen or where a new campaign is going.

Do the dissidents have the numbers ?

Yes I think so….. if it go down the South American road the dissidents will overnight have the partners, parents, families and friends of most elected politician on their side to ‘ end it now and pull out’

I sincerely hope that it will not come to this but Britain is not in a position to threaten ‘immediate and terrible war ‘ this time around .

Far from state forces having it all their own way, if anything the shoe is on the other foot!

Munsterview

wild R….

Problem is most republicasns regard all the ‘C’ as the same ‘F’s ! and so do not see too much difference. However you are right !

Munsterview

Points noted, some agreed with. However only dealing with the matter in passing, the subject is for another day !

JJ malloy

“The pseudo gangs of Low Intensity War has been successfully checkmated in South America by guerilla groups……. for every such assassination carried out in a rebel held area, two officials of the State Party prosecuting the war were killed in the city!”

What guerilla groups are you talking about? Shining Path and FARC have both been utterly defeated.

JJ malloy

May be of interest, regarding technology and warfare:

Stuxnet is the computer virus that you may have heard about in the news that has take hold in Iran’s defense files. Cyberwarfare baby…maybe we aren’t too far behind the Chinese.

Looks like the Mullahs in Iran haven’t quite figured out all this complicated infidel technology.

(Q) What damage has Stuxnet done to Iran?
(A) Stuxnet has destroyed all the files in Iran’s industrial computers and all of it’s backup files
(Q) Why are these files important?
(A) These are the files that run Iran’s industrial/military complex. Without them Iran cannot assemble cars without manufacturing errors, they cannot run their centrifuges to enrich uranium without breakdowns, they cannot start-up Bushehr safely, they cannot run their oil industry. By destroying these files with Stuxnet, Iran’s industrial/military complex has come to a screeching halt.

(Q) What are the long-term implications of this destruction?
(A) Iran’s industrial military complex cannot use these computer files without enormous risk and catastrophic consequences. Not without the risk of the attacker manipulating the data on the files – say by turning off the coolant pump in a reactor thus causing it to meltdown – like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

(Q) Can’t they just replace the files from their backups?
(A) Self-replicating code has been injected into all Step7 files so that if you open any one of the files, Stuxnet re-infects the computer. Since Stuxnet has been around since January 2010, all current files AND backups have also been infected. Even if you were to by a brand new computer and load up the backup files, the computer is re-infected as soon as you open any one of those Step7 files.

(Q) Can’t they just erase the virus from the Step7 files?
(A) No. If you try to remove it, it makes the file unusable, just destroys it. Same with the backup files.

(Q) So how do the Iranians recover this irreplaceable data?
(A) They can’t, They have to throw everything in the trash and start over. That means all the PLC hardware the computers drive: drills, saws, robots, valves, pumps or any device that has a Siemens’s PLC controller. They have to throw away all the Step7 files they’ve developed over the years. They have to buy new PLC hardware and Siemens’s Step7 software – which they can’t – because all of this is restricted under UN sanctions.

(Q) There is no way for the Iranian’s to recover?
(A) None short of negotiating with the attacker for the “key” that disables Stuxnet.

(Q) Is Stuxnet nuclear blackmail?
(A) Obama said that Iran had to end it’s nuclear program or face consequences.

Millions upon millions of lines of Step7 code and files are now irreversibly infected. If the Iranians continue to run these infected files, the equipment the computers control can be sabotaged by US/Israeli agents at will. Agents could turn off a cooling pump at Bushehr causing the core to overheat and be permanently damaged. They could affect how cars are made in Iran’s auto plants. Agents could even destroy Iran’s oil production facilities and operations by turning a couple of pipeline valves on/off, creating uncontrolled explosions in pipelines and refineries, halting Iran’s primary source of hard currency.

Obama’s motives for unleashing Stuxnet is to (1) cripple Iran’s nuclear program in it’s entirety (Bushehr, Nataanz and all other hidden sites) plus (2) give him the tool to affect and enforce the regimes nuclear compliance if they acquiesce, and (3) barring all other scenarios, implement regime change by massively shutting down Iran’s economy through widespread acts of industrial sabotage.

Munsterview

JJ

Meant to pass this on to you and others following this ‘worm warfare’. Some pretty good overview articles. As a news digest and gateway reference to other sites I find that the ‘DailygGrail’ is one of the better sites.

Specifically see the 27 / 09 / 10 news briefs for a concentration on the subject.